


The Crocodile Smile

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Hook (1991), Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Peter Pan (1953), Peter Pan (2003), Treasure Island & Related Fandoms, Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Body Horror, Crossover, Long John Silver is a bastard (but you already know that), M/M, Magic, Mild Loss of Sanity, Never Never Land, Surrealism, Transformation, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-07-27 19:47:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16226084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: "Silver had a strange thought; that he was going to suffer by some creature or chaos called "James." "It had come to Silver’s attention, through his communes with his men on varying ports, that there was one man who claimed he feared him among all other men, and John Silver knew this to be folly, for he feared no-one and nothing, and he himself had been feared of by none other than Captain Flint himself. The thought was enough to make Silver smirk like a basking crocodile.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This should be updated very quickly - I'd had it on the backburner since before Lowlands Away and wished for it to be a long one-shot. Due to how it has developed, I think three chapters keep it clearer. This first one is merely a warm-up. The two remaining chapters are 7000 words plus!
> 
> As a kid watching Hook, I remember being enraged by the thought of Hook murdering Long John Silver - consider this payback wish fulfilment. 
> 
> I own nothing, non-profit fun only.

After the initial attack, John Silver catches the Captain weeping to his first mate, a portly swab in blue stripes and what looks like a nightcap, and the scene is so pathetic that Silver doesn't know whether to cackle or voice his disgust, and he does both in the end, his burbles of low dark laughter splitting the crew right down the middle.

The man throws aside his tears as soon as he unsheathes his sword, and an adult ferocity belies the childish tantrum.  Silver laughs even more, too well versed in bullies in frock coats and an intellectual education that has deemed them thoroughly stupid.

But a master swordsman he be, even with his fat black curls spiralled past his skinny shoulders, beaked nose, scum green eyes and a mouth wet and wide. Even if he was lethal with his blade, he is churlish and too quick to attack and mocks Long John's lack of leg. Silver penitently reduces the blubbering coward on his knees.

He lets him go, at least for now, has him dragged off by the hem of his laced coat. The scene is too disgusting to continue, enough to put any decent man off his pork and potatoes.

The man is called "James." Silver has a strange thought, as he cajoles Smee for the treasures aboard the ships and all maps that may lead to more, that he is going to suffer by some creature or chaos named "James."


	2. Hook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is based on the 1991 film Hook.

 

They have been sailing for many moons and seemed to have reached a place where the blooms do not fall from their flowers nor the nuts and fruit from the trees, and the air is strange and settled as if it has been for an unusually long time. The men are restless when they pull ashore, for there awaiting them is a pirate's port that looks as if it sprung bare moments before, so new in its squalor as if a storybook rumour of pirate towns had struck to life.

Fairytale or no fairytale, it is port. Silver sees that his reputation precedes him, for he only must hop past the harbour of this here town before whispers and gasps cloud the air around him, and usually such notoriety would pull from him a smirk and a story to tell the local whores, but no. There is a troubling expectation in these whispers, the silence that falls when one is just about to release a frothing dog into a pit of rats.

James Leland Hook is a spectre in red ruffles with gold trim on his sleeves and buckles, a coiffed wig ugly on his head, unfashionable in these ages even for a pirate captain. Silver looks upon the preening Eton Boy peacock and hates him immediately, but knows it be poor form to approach another legend with a short remark, so he smirks and removing his hat, bows at the waist.

“Why, Barbecue!” Hook has a voice like a tin whistle, high and fey. “What a pleasure it be to have your rugged acquaintance.”

“Why sir, it be mine one pleasure, that I’m sure.” Silver replies pleasantly.  “Although I have been informed by less pleasant sources that there be even less pleasant rumours abound, James.”

A hush follows at the use of his given name, and the fine greased curl of his moustache twitches like an overwound clock, but he keeps his gaiety (barely.)

“Why what such rumours be this?” He trills. “Perhaps we may retire to my humble cabin for a tete la tete?”

“Oh, I wouldn't do that, oh no.” Silver lets his smile drop, just a centimetre. “Wouldn't be fair on poor Smee, would it?”

The whores on the road titter amongst themselves. Smee appears from the back room carrying what looks like a large bedside clock, having come at the call of his name. There is a scream of cogs and gears. Smee starts, peering down in disbelief, as a hook is buried deep in the face of the clock.

Silver laughs.

“Rumours of that being my bedside clock, is it?” He hops over to the staircase and brazenly leans over it. His crew huddle themselves in the mess of whores and fellow pirates as if trying to vanish. Only faithful Jerry Calico stands tall behind his Captain. “Why, what a load of bollocks, James. As if I, a poor self-made swab like meself, with no fancy education or silver spoons shoved in my gob, do you truly believe I would give room to such a thing as that?”

“The thing about rumours, my dear sea cook,” James frames his face with the cruel steel of his titular hook. Jerry’s hand quivers at his side, where his cutlass hangs heavy. “Is that they can be easily confirmed. It is my speciality.”

“By the powers of all that be,” Long John taps his fingers on the bannister. “Know I fear no man Jimmy Hook, and least alone a fig stuffed toffee nosed silver eatin’ ageing old cobbler who got bested by a child.”

Hook’s cheeks flare real red beneath his rouge. Wood and varnish splinter, his hook carving a creek in the bannister.

“Peter Pan is no child!” He roars. Smee swears, removes a lace handkerchief from his belt, and spitting on it, pats Hook’s flushing face.

“Come on now, Barbecue.” It is impossible to dislike Smee. “Are you tryin’ to upset the dear Captain? He’s been under a lot of stress lately, I’ll hav’ you know, and it be doing nothin’ for his blood pressure.”

“Avast, Smee!” Hook flutters him away, in a gesture both absurdly gentle and enraged, as if shunning his mother. “I am fine! I am complete, I am…” Hook takes a deep breath and slits his thin mouth into a horrid smile. “I am willing to accommodate this foolhardy attack on my authority. Indeed, you are brave, Barbecue. But there is far more of me then they be of you, and…” He shrugs helplessly. “I have a reputation to uphold. And that reputation includes a Sunday keelhaul. Which you, your crew and your crutch are more than welcome to attend, seeing as you shall be the prime attraction.”

The men close in. There is nothing to be done, surely. Silver wonders if he has died at sea, and wound up in a strange case of purgatory, for everything here is too bold, too bright, too ugly in its colour, like a picture book or a child’s tale. But the blood flows just as real, and just as red.

* * *

 

Hook’s brig is no place for gentlemen, and alas, no place for gentlemen of fortune. Grim it is, and dark, and forever weeping salt water. But Silver is not depressed. He has a week to live, and he plans to make the most of it, and one of the ways he plans to make the most of it, of course, is to find a way to escape.

He loathes Hook, that much is true, but it seems this loathing is not taken personal by the other pirates on the rock, and certainly not Smee, who brings along men and whores curious to sample Silver’s infamous grub and his stories. Hook has fear and education, Silver has charm and reputation, and he uses both to sweeten the ears of the onlookers, and by the end of the second day, even Smee looks doubtful about his impending death and considerably fatter by Silver’s infamous cooking.

The whores frequent the brig, and Silver directs him to his desperate and depleted crew, for he is, after all, a generous captain, and after all, he needs his wits about him, and sex be the last thing on his mind, even in the wake of death.

On the third day, however, everything changes.

A ship is caught on the horizon, bearing dazed soldiers in England blue, and before they even touch the bay they are boarded and brought ashore. Silver is cooking whilst it happens, and he pays it small mind until they bring the youngest officer abroad; another James, don’t you know.

Jim Hawkins is barely twenty, still a child in many eyes, but manhood has sat well on him, for he remains stoic, even bound on his knees.

"Well, well." Hook pauses at the top of his bannister, too taken aback to command Smee to stomp his foot and lay out the red carpet. Taking in the fine sight, he twiddles his moustache into a perfect curl, and gestures for Smee to dust his jacket and powder his nose. Silver's lip curls, exposing his teeth like a hunting crocodile.

"And who might you be, young man?" he coos, signalling for his men to lift a bemused Jim to his feet. "I am Captain James Hook of The Jolly Roger, the most feared pirate who ever sailed all seven sheets of the briny blue. Amputee, cutthroat, scholar and gentlemen, and a damn fine organ player. I am sure that you will be happy to remain completely at my disposal, as soon as you announce yourself."

Jim is pretty, and soft looking in comparison to the aged salts among him, and even the whores jostle themselves hopefully. Smee frowns at Hook's back.

"My name is Jim Hawkins, sir." It is good to hear Jim’s voice again - and already, so smooth, not using his given name of "James." Smart lad. "I am Captain of the ship Polaris and Officer of the Royal Navy."

"Polaris?" Hook's watery blues twinkle and he shoots a half glance at Long John, who remains pokerfaced. "Why, what a romantic name. A fancy man, are you? Eton boy like myself, perchance? Surely one as young as you, to get himself a captaincy, you must have a busy tongue and a keen hand."

Laughter erupts. Jim keeps his chin up, his gaze steady, even with the flush of anger on his cheeks. Silver feels proud.

"I was an orphan, sir," Jim replies quietly. "I didn't have the benefit of your means nor your education."

“Is that so?" Hook leans in closer, dawdling his spectacles on the end of his beaked nose. "Well, most complimentary, Mr Hawkins. May I inquire about the purpose of your ill-advised trip here?"

“There was a storm." The boy says dryly. "No chart nor map we have tells of a place like this."

“Why, my boy!" crows Hook. "You are in Never Never Land, a place where legends come to life and pirates rule. And as I am Neverland, I am also its law, and unfortunately for you, I must uphold the law. What do we do with trespassers, men?"

A selection of punishments rings out. Hanging, keelhauling, boiling in oil. Jim remains silent through it all.

"If there is any way you can," Jim pleads, quiet. "I beg you to spare my men."

Honest, brave and true! Silver curses Jim for it.

"We-ell..." Hook scratches his cheek with his hook. "We are always in need of new whores and new pirates. Unless they choose to join our happy family, I see no reason for them to live. However..." He leans in close to Jim, looking hungrily not just at his face, but at his hands, his chest, his unlined baby pink skin. Silver scoffs. It makes sense for a wilting peacock to want to pluck the feathers of younger chicks. "Hand yourself over to my service, Jim Hawkins, for you see, I have none of your age, nor talent in my crew, and I do like something pretty to look at in the dwindling hours of my twilight years."

The men guffaw amongst themselves. Smee looks remorsefully at Silver. If Jim knows what he is referring to, he makes no move to counter it, but Silver sees Jim’s fingers twitch suddenly, frightened.

“If I say yes, my men will be spared?"

"Naturally."

Jim squares his shoulders.

“Done.”

“Hurrah!” The peacock claps his hands. Silver feels the weight of his manacles. The game has changed now, the sands shifted. By the look in Hook’s wicked old eye, he knows it too.

An hour later, he is allowed below deck. Jim sits in the galley, stripped at the waist. Silver notes, with a fretful hope, that his clothes are mostly intact.

“Jim-Lad.” Silver says softly, softer then he has spoke in a while. As Jim looks up, Silver lifts his chained hands as a manner of truce. “To think I would be seeing you again under such circumstances, Master Hawkins.”

“Long John.” Jim croaks, before he drops his shoulders, and along with it, the years of Navy training and hard values, and smiles sad and familiar. Silver feels a hitch in his crusty heart. There, that be his Jim!  “I can guess your circumstances are no better than mine, but it’s good to see you again.” He pauses and chuckles. “You old sea dog.”

“Ye would clap this old sea dog in irons given any other circumstance, Jim.” Silver sits opposite, grateful Jim has not resumed his grudge. Obviously, there are more crucial matters. He doesn’t compliment Jim on the visible captaincy, nor his ship, nor his medals he saw all glinting in the sun. He thinks nothing of the Navy, nor the Government, only that a man as smart as Jim was wasted in it all. “But as ye know, this sea dog is more than worthy of a few new tricks.”

“You’re planning to escape? But of course.”

Jim chuckles with an affection Silver was certain he’d forgotten, for no-one had ever given affection to Long John so freely, not since his cabin boy. The shadows fall on Jim’s cut lip and the purpled hollow of his left eye, and possessiveness springs new and tempting. But this is Neverland, dark and twisty, and already he can feel the encroach of its purgatorial magic, and none so potent as when Jim set foot on deck.

No wonder Hook is so daffy if he has been a fossil here for so long.

* * *

 

That night, Silver bides his time on deck. His plotting makes his brain sore.

 Overlooking the Jolly Roger is an enormous stuffed crocodile, a cracked clock stuck obscenely in its mouth. The reptile eyes are dull slits, devoid of life, but Silver can still sense the stamp of rage upon them, and he feels it too, that curdling of hate in his stomach. He thinks of Hook˙s foul smile, the derision he feels towards his men, shaking in their boots at the sight and sound of his name, and the lie about the bedside clock, the twitch of fright in Jim˙s fingers, the predatory gleam hot in the old dandy˙s eye, and oh, the hate is new and almost frightening and coaxes a slow growl from his throat.

The more he fixates on the dull scales of the crocodile, the more he feels that hot, testy emotion, pushing and pulsing in his skin, as if he is being rewired. Dark, twisty Neverland, no place for a gentleman of fortune.

Later, as he cooks for the crew - he believes Hook, in his old age, has forgotten his death sentence - he sees an odd rash emerging from beneath his left cuff, green-hued in its centre, smooth and scaled. Maybe he should be alarmed - he isn’t - and the sight and feel of it make him chortle, then laugh, long and hard, echoing around his galley. Why plot revenge, when Neverland would do it so sweetly for him?

“Long John?” Jim sounds like he did once upon a time, observant to a fault, inching his way into the galley. He has escaped the above decks. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, Jim.” Silver says, though there is a throatiness to his voice that wasn’t there before, as if his tongue cannot move freely in his mouth for all the teeth in it. “Be a good lad and take these here dishes above, yes?”

Jim relaxes, relieved, and Silver barely has time to ponder what has made him relieved in the first place, but the boy hurries forward and takes the plates, as ordered.

“Like old times,” he says, as he shoots a rare smile at John, darting out the galley, and Long John is made frighteningly aware of a new sensation creeping up his gut.

Hunger.

For a cook to be hungry is an irony, but he's never been as hungry as this before, and nothing he eats sates it, not even his infamous salt pork and potatoes, and he looks at Hook and is starving in his hatred, and he looks at Jim and feels suddenly so empty he could die with it.

He starts to plan.

* * *

 

As the week progresses closer to his fateful day - or is it a week, it is so hard to tell, it could have been a year at least - he wakes with his human tongue caught on reptile teeth and his chest hard and impenetrable with moss coloured ridges. He hides it beneath a fine coat he has pawned off the local pirates,and wears gloves to hide the narrowing curve of his nails. Claws, he thinks proudly, and everything he cooks is so delicious and so flavoursome that even Hook, according to Smee, is impressed with it.

“Play your cards right,” says the ever amicable Smee. “And he might hire you for a cook, granted ye keep your tongue in yer head.”

“That be a fancy thought,” Silver agrees, keeping his lips tight in a swelling smile. “As always, I be happy to accept his mercy.”

“He's left Jim alone for now,” Smee adds quickly, almost kindly. Silver bites his tongue and savours the blood of it. “Play yer cards right, and he may forget about the boy.”

“Has he had him yet?” Silver says thickly, his back to Smee. His eyes blink their inner and then outer lid. His pupil is straightening out into a thin line, like a shirt squeezed between a washer woman’s hands. “Or has the dirty old bugger kept his hands to himself?”

“That be all talk!” Smee adjusts his trousers, stealing a chicken leg as he does so. The casualness of the action reveals a yet realised lie. Silver can paint and erase men in one look. Smee is no exception. “He talks rough, but he be too distracted to deal with younger boys, ‘specially considering his track record with ‘em.”

Silver does not turn around, but gestures to a nearby bowl brimming with sweetmeats, to which Smee helps himself generously.

Silver cooks and drinks long into the night, as by Nevertime goes, he has but two days left to live. The dark hides his shining eyes, his beckoning claws, the hook of his teeth pushing jagged on the corners of his mouth.

* * *

 

You can hide things from idiots, but not Jim Hawkins, who catches him unaware in the galley early the next morning.

From his spine there has split hard rectangles, spiking down from the crane of his neck. Leant on his crutch for support, Silver turns this way and that in the mirror, smirking as he does so, only to spy Jim’s pale face over his shoulder.

“Silver!” To his delight, it is a concern, rather than fear or disgust, that clouds Jim’s tone. “My god, what has this place done to you?”

“Shaped me, Jim.” He turns to Jim. He hides not his teeth nor his claws, and fear stabs Jim’s face, alongside a despair, but also a fascination. Silver smiles his classic smile - god knows how it must appear now, although he fancies it makes him most handsome - and he extends his hand to Jim, beckoning him closer. “You can touch if you like.”

Typical boy. Jim always - although later he would have sworn against it, and he is certain that stuffy fool Smollett would have insisted on it - that no matter how strange or bizarre, the boy was a discoverer, not merely a sailor.

He shudders in delight in as Jim’s human fingers touch the ridges of his back, working along to the rough membrane hide, to the claws now driven to a perfect point at the tips of his powerful hands.

“I don’t understand.” Jim is failing to his hide his awe, nor his fear. Silver fancies he likes both. “It’s like you’re becoming…outside, the clock, the…”

“I'm so hungry, Jim.” Silver groans, rolling his head into Jim’s hand, who jumps at the sudden action. “Starving, in fact.”

“Then eat.” Jim takes a step back. “Is…there anyway to stop this? Turn you back?”

Silver cracks open one yellow eye and smiles.

“I'm hungry,” he repeats, and in the same breath, reaches for Jim, and oh, in Jim, he is certain he hears the reassuring Tick Tock of a strong clock, a promise of real time and order. Not that he usually bothered with such things, but in this place of colour and noise and transfiguration, well, it was a comfort. Jim, the bringer of righteousness. Hah.

“Silver!” Jim warns, his hand jumping to his belt, but Silver already has him, moving too fast. He breathes in the scent of Jim’s skin; fresh and sweet, like the lamb he'd cooked for the squire before Treasure Island. He rests his teeth on Jim’s neck, nipping lightly, barely enough to draw blood, before he substitutes it for a kiss.

Jim trembles at that, all shook in his bones, before he melts against Silver, whether to reciprocate or placate, Silver isn't too sure. But there it is, that tick took rhythm, reverberating in Jim’s veins, the beat of his heart.

“Long John.” Jim pleads, his hands coming to rest on Silver’s naked shoulders. “Please. Can this be undone? What can I do, with my men hostage and you like this?”

Silver recalls Smee, the stolen chicken leg and the downturned eye. The very thought makes him sick, but on the other hand, a step closer to Hook – well. Silver licks his lips at the thought and growls into Jim’s skin, making the boy jump.

“Ye be all so charming, lad.” He says. “You charm Hook and create a tender distraction, and well…”

Jim shoves him away. The lanterns swing above and shine in the frightened coil of his eye.

“You kiss me and then you suggest that?” He hisses. “Are you insane?”

“Have you never played hard to get, Jim-Lad?” The crocodile snaps back. “It wouldn’t be hard. He likes pretty things. I have a day to live, Jim. He’ll hang me and he’ll have you whatever way, but if you play your cards right, he’ll barely have time to kiss ye hand before I make my attack.”

“And if this works? What will become of you? And me, for that?”

Silver sniggers.

“Don’t be a fool, Jim-Lad. I’ll be Captaining the Jolly Roger so quick no-one would blink. The blood I draw will guarantee their blood loyalty to me.”

“And when that is done…” Jim examines him closely. “You will release my men?”

Silver smiles.

“Of course, Jim.” He nods. “Your men will certainly go free.”

Jim locks his jaw.

“You promise, Silver?”

“Why yes, Jim. A gentlemen’s bargain.”

He can see the way Jim looks at him, like the word man in gentlemen is even accurate anymore, but he nods stiffly, and flees just as Silver reaches for him once again.

 

* * *

 

Jim-Lad is as pure as can be, he is certain, but never has Silver seen so sweet a deception. Why, the boy be a professional. He sidles up to Hook under the blue summer skies, virginal eyes prettily lowered, and murmurs about stories he has heard of Hook’s exploits. Unlike the whores, there is sincerity beneath the deceit. His Jim be a true wave chaser, he be, and he alone knows how much the boy loves the wild sea tossed yarns of the pirate life.

 _Soon_ , he thinks wickedly.

Hook is suspicious, the first hint of wit beneath that creaking powdered milk flower, before he spies Jim’s skin and hair and young form, and his ego slides conveniently into place, ushering the lad into a cabin groaning with dismembered clocks. Smee toddles behind, only to find the door a hard press on his face.

The sun is shining. It is a new day, and a beautiful one at that, even if the sun makes the ol’ stuffed croc seem extra dusty, dried in its dead scales. Silver, chained, is cooking in the sea of bustling men, the frying meats watering the mouths of the onlookers.

He stretches out his fingers in his gloves, feeling the knuckles crack, his claws pierce the seams. The whores, storybook sluts, flutter about him, giggling about bonnie Jim, powder falling from their faces like ash with each stretched smile. Smee snatches a hulk of bread off the table, chewing miserable.

“Troubled, sweet Smee?” Silver arranges his tongue around all his teeth. “He be ignoring ye for somethin’ a touch fresher?”

“I do only what Captain needs,” is the quick reply, the first touch of temper beneath the easy charm. Silver laughs uproariously, tipping his head back, and the glorious sun shines on his teeth.

Smee drops his bread.

Silver knows his laugh be second to none. Ye can chill more with humour than ever with fear. 

The chains clatter. His skin grows hard, his irises pulling tight in like a lady’s corset, his spines splitting his coat like a line of daggers. His laugh crawls higher and higher, becoming a roar. The crocodile, held high by the brackets and wood and iron of the clock, begins to crumble, to flake inwards. It crashes to the ground, spilling ashes, useless and hollow.

As his tail sweeps the deck, Silver falls on all fours and laughs.

 

* * *

 

The clocks begin to stir. Cogs reawaken, hands begin to vibrate, ticks and tocks and sweet belied chimes rekindle the turning of time. Jim is pushed against the frame of an enormous Grandfather clock, his eyelashes trembling at the creak of the door, Hook’s lips freezing on his neck at the sudden choral of clocks.

The beast rambles in, the drag of claws shifting to the easy tread of boots, and Hook turns just as the cutlass meets his breastbone. The blade slides up, through heavy gilt fabric and middle-aged gristle, and Hook releases a gasp like a screaming whistle.

He looks into Silver’s eye - a crocodile’s eye - and Silver sees a pure, unconfined terror, and the hunger is satisfied so warmly and completely he cannot help but smile, spreading his jaws wide and terrible.

* * *

 

Blood and viscera trails Silver as he emerges from the cabin, a long ruby streak that has soaked the bottom of his boots. His hair is loose amongst his shoulders, dusky ringlets past the beam in his face, Hook’s grand old coat flung unceremoniously over his shoulders. The men stand back, gibbering as Silver plants a heavy boot on the soiled rug stairs, and with each step, the men gasp and shudder and pull at each other to make space.

Jim Hawkins stands perfectly still, Smee hiding behind him.

Silver flings the silver hook at Jim’s feet.

“A deal is a deal, Master Hawkins.” He says softly. “I can say in good faith there be no man on this rock that will challenge my new authority. Your men can go.”

Jim nods, and gestures to the sailors on the bank. They flee toward their ship, no doubt dusty and ill used by now.

Jim turns, only to find a barrier of men blocking his way.

“Silver…”

“Only your men, Jim.” Silver sounds almost apologetic, reaching for Jim’s shoulder. His nails are growing again, thinning to fine points, cutting into the linen and felt.  Almost. “Nought about you returning, oh no.”

Jim flinches.

“You lied.”

“I was nonspecific.” He touches Jim’s jaw, feeling along the curve of bone, sensing the yank of muscle and blood as Jim tautens and tenses like a bow string. He lowers his voice, to merely a sweet secret between them. “A waste, for you to be in the Naval world. Nothing but labour and rigour and not an ounce of wonder.”

“There is no wonder to be found in this unchanging hell!” Jim starts, battering his hand away. “Do you think I came all this way from goddamn nothing to give it up to fester here?”

Silver sniggers. There is no snarl in it. Bonnie Jim!

“And what makes ye think I plan to sit and get fat on my laurels? I be no Jamie Hook, Jim.” He pats his scabbard. Jim looks him up and down, sucking in air as aquamarine scales creep across his knuckles and neck. Silver breaks a smile too full in teeth. “A crocodile must take to the water, yes?”


	3. Captain James Hook (2003)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on Peter Pan 2003.

Jim Hawkins celebrates his eighteenth birthday in the company of his new crew at Port Royale, at a less than respectable inn, but that’s half the fun of it, to be free of Smollett’s concerned caring eye. But here, in the inn, he hears the name _Long John Silver_ and _missing_ in the same sentence. He knew Silver survived the leaking jolly boat – of course he did, he had survived so much more, the loss of his leg and the mutiny of his own crew through sheer cleverness – and although he claimed to hate the old pirate, the knowledge that he kept on at his grubby old life was a private comfort. But now bereaved of that, he shivers and loses appetite for drink and song, and a darkness falls upon his eye as if he has lost his dear father all over again.

The more of his wage he bypasses to the gossiping barkeep the more the man is happy to oblige the story. A mysterious tale, and one easily made up to escape the law. Silver and a small crew had ventured into uncharted waters just north of the Spanish Main, where a storm had brewed and chased the ship into the mouth of it. No trace of any wreckage was found, and no bodies nor bounty were washed up on the neighbouring shores. Jim asks for the coordinates. The barkeep scoffs and makes the sign of the cross.

Jim empties out his pockets, his gift money for his new commission, even his father’s compass.

That night, with a sketched map and emptier pockets, Jim Hawkins gathers a small crew of salts (how they smirk and lark about serving under a child) and leaves his officers and commission behind.

His father’s compass, worthless to a barkeep, he wears around his neck, and it directs him swift and steady to his bearing.

There is no ruination on the journey, and strange it seems, for the barkeep says three weeks yet they seem to move eerily fast, scoring past the miles as they sleep, as if the bearing feels the power of Jim’s need and drives them on like a magnet. _It’s like it wants to be found_ , Jim thinks before a storm hits and a lashing wave slaps him from his ship and into the waves.

* * *

 

“You alright, son?”

Jim wakes on a frozen ship on a frozen sea. A man peers down at him, blearily pushing his spectacles back on his ruddy nose. A gaggle of filthy men circle above him, gold-toothed and ragged and looking like legends come to life. _Pirates,_ Jim thinks. _Pirates._

“He fell out of the sky, Smee!” boasts a man with – Jim must have struck his head harder than he thought – his hands on _backwards._ “Like a shot bird! Do ye think he be one of Pan’s brats?”

“Hard to say,” The ruddy nosed man comes closer. He presses a corkscrew blade to the tip of Jim’s chin. “He looks a bit old, don’t he?”

“Where am I?” Jim’s voice comes out in a croak. The air is bitter with an inescapable chill. Jim thinks of the balmy rain of the Spanish Main and shivers. Did he fall into one side of the world and come out the other? “There was a storm. I was…”

“How old are you, boy?” Despite the kindliness of his tone, Smee pokes blood with his dagger.

“Eighteen.”

A confused murmur ripples about the crew. Jim struggles to his feet, Smee’s cutlass still haunting a centimetre from his neck. The men stand back, almost afraid, as if he is some fairy or strange creature they cannot place. Among them, there is none as young as he.

Arms grab him and hurl him forward. Jim, dazed, can only stare at the thick ice on the sea and the mound of a strange island a swimming distance away, and he tries to think of his crew and ship and commission and finds he struggles to think of anything at all.

* * *

 

Jim is ushered into a cabin – ornate, dark, heavy with gold gilt and plush red cushions – and the men pry back and flee, leaving him alone with Smee. The moans of the turning ship echo loud and large, which is unusual, Jim thinks, for surely the ship is set hard in ice.

On the table, Jim thinks he sees lounging a wild matted cat, only for the hair to shift and a face to loom up, appearing pale and withered beneath his mane. Bare-chested, stinking drunk, the Captain leans back slowly, as if winding up the strings that upheld his shoulders, be it by sanity or sobriety. For a moment, he looks utterly pathetic, and Jim almost feels pity, only for the face to turn dark at the sight of the boy.

“One of Pan’s brats?” He intones ruggedly, reaching for his goblet. Casually, he places his other arm on the table, revealing a pink, scarred stump where a hand should be. Jim doesn’t blink.

“No, Cap’n!” Smee nudges Jim to his feet. “Look closer! He be too old. Barely eighteen, him says.”

The Captain lowers his drink and looks closely at Jim, who stares absently back.

“Most curious.” A trace of interest slithers into his voice. “My, my. Fell out of the sky, you said?”

“Yes, Cap’n.”

“Boy.” The figure drawls lazily. “What is your name?”

“Jim Hawkins, sir.” Pirate or no pirate, it’s best to be civil. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Oh?” The Captain looks him up and down, almost hungrily, and gestures for Smee to aid him. “And whom may that be?”

“An old friend. Long John Silver.”

The Captain tenses, his back to Jim, before he turns and smiles. It’s a dreadful smile. The light is now upon his face, his lean and hairy body, and Jim can see him clear for the first time. The man is handsome, too handsome, in a way that is too grotesque for words, the kind of handsomeness just clinging to the last weeded bloom of youth. His forget me not eyes are pinched red in the pupil, and as Smee combs his wild hair into a rosette of tiny corkscrew curls, the Captain slings a leather harness across his muscled back.

A spit of boiling water, and a hiss of pain. The Captain lifts his missing hand, now emboldened with a fierce metal hook. He fingers the end of it, snapping it into place, his eyes on Jim.

Jim knows better than to repeat his statement. He stares steadily back, unafraid.

He clicks his fingers for Smee, who places a red frock coat over the Captain’s bare shoulders. A lusty blood red, gold emblazoned across the chest in patterns of gilt leaves and flowers, matched only by the fat plume on the matching hat now sat over his ears. He carries the shadow of Long John Silver once upon a time, and in a flash that sits odd between his eyes, they appear one and the same.

“Jim Hawkins, my sweetest apologies.” He leans in close, tilting Jim’s chin with the sharp end of his hook. “No such man has come this way.”

“Where am I?” Jim asks. He places a hand on the Captain’s hook, lowering it slowly down as if calming a child. The blue eyes dilate dangerously, but Jim sighs and shakes his head. “I fell from the sky, how is that possible?”

“I am James Hook, of The Jolly Roger.” The Captain replies. He touches Jim’s face with his human hand, the fingers hovering over his throat, and a strange look comes upon his eye. “Why, you didn’t. That would be impossible. We found you adrift, and well, saved your young life.”

“Noble.” Jim replies, dry. “But why would you do that?”

“For we need a cabin boy.” Jim’s hand is still a light grip on the Captain’s hook. The action seems to be settling the Captain, like petting a half-tame tiger. He smiles, again, too handsome. “And you owe us a debt. And stay with us long enough, and prove your worth, and I may help you find your precious John Silver.”

The name is enough to numb Jim’s tongue. He drops his hand, and nods slowly.

“Yes, sir.” He says, for there is no other way, for the sea is frozen solid and men drop out of skies, and if he learnt anything from Silver, it is how to bide his time.

For what he learnt nothing for, he cannot place how Hook looks at him, both fascinated and furious and a bizarre state of in-between, as if Jim is a rare manner of creature upon which he has never seen in person.

* * *

 

There is a crocodile that haunts the ship's berth, resembling an enormous upturned tree trunk in the water. The men whisper it has been far more active, hungrier, since Jim's arrival, but none dare say anything against the captain's new favourite.

Hook, in his plumed hat and gilded frock coat, recall a memory Jim is losing, that of a crocodile smile and the scent of sweated ginger and the taste of overripe apples. But whenever he questions he reasons for why he is here, for why he fell out of the sky, or so they say, Hook merely shrugs and says he was a castaway they caught in their nets one fine morning, and out of the kindness of their hearts, rescued and raised the boy, and now, well, now he owes them _everything._

Everything, Hook says, his pupil fattening on Jim’s young body, and he speaks, so gentle and suave, inviting the young man back to his cabin most nights for rum and music. Hook's mood, it appears according to the crew, is no longer as foul as anticipated, and the snow doesn’t fall so heavy and cold. By Hook, Jim is repulsed and entranced. The memory of curls and red coats and clever pirates stirs heat in his blood, and he begins to wonder if the pirate he was searching for was James Hook all along.

The crocodile seethes in the frozen waters, rounding the ship in endless circles, the tick-tock echo in his barreled belly driving the crew to distraction. Harpoons and gunshots only inflame the beast, who skids its claws up the side of the ship, cutting deep aggressive gouges in the oak like scars on a great whale.

But Hook's impatience grows, and Jim wakes to a sweltering swamp like summer. The surrounding sea is green with the scum of it. It is harder to spy the crocodile, now camouflaged so cleverly, and as Jim hangs over the side in the dwindling daylight, he sees the crocodile raise its mighty head out of the water and wink at him.

Jim had no idea a crocodile could smile if such a thing could be called it, but it curls up its scaled lips, ripping teeth on full display. Within the bulge of its yellow slit eye, a swirl of green emerges, expressive and almost human. Jim is caught in its steady stare, and for a moment is mesmerized as it paws one clawed foot on the bow of the ship. As the waves sweep against it, Jim sees it is missing one of its back legs, cleaved clean off to the joint.

His father's compass thrums hot on his chest. Swearing, Jim flicks it open, only to see the arrow vibrating most violently in the direction of the crocodile, and it smiles again, eyes lit and teeth manic.

Hook is behind Jim in a heartbeat. The crocodile expels from the water, snapping at the air, and Hook screams at his men to shoot it.

"Are you quite alright, boy?" He speaks, so light and pretty, but it makes Jim feel sick all the same. There is a most bizarre look in his eye, a betrayed desperation. "Tell me, Jim. Why would you entertain a beast like that?"

Jim looks at Hook in silence and thinks about the nature of entertaining beasts, of keeping them down, of keeping them moral by the power of heart alone.

* * *

 

That night, Jim dreams. Dreams of storms the colour of crocodile scales, of winters merging into summer and back, of teeth in red frock coats and hooks in leg sockets. He wakes and weeps for the first time since he lost his mother. He has huddled away from the other men, in the sanctuary of the galley, a place that smells of ginger and spice. Smee watches him from afar and offers nothing but a spoilt handkerchief, but Jim takes it anyway, for there was no man alive who disliked Smee.

The dreams intensify. The crocodile ticks away in what appears to be never-ending days. Jim doesn’t feel any younger, nor any older. He cannot count the days, not for Hook's intensive company, and he begins to fear, for be it by familiarity or desperation, he is coming to care for Hook, more than just the ghost of Tricon hats and blood fabric.

Hook kisses Jim on a night where the heat begins to suffocate the men in the lower decks. Hook tastes of caviar and whiskey, and of something overly sweet behind that, like fruit too old and sickly. Jim pushes him away, a hand on Hook's bare hairy chest, though arousal pumps through his legs to his neck to his ears. Hook merely laughs and kisses him again, and there is bright sick hope in his eyes.

As they kiss, the hook cuts into Jim’s stomach and draws blood, winding a trail up to his heart, and Hook suckles where the blood flows like a dream. Jim lays still, shocked, pliant, but his heart is full of a terrible pity and he raises his hand and moves the sweaty curls from James's face.

The tenderness halts Hook, who appears aghast at it, first furious, then meek like a child, and he lies his head in Jim's lap and hums shanties. He speaks sweetly of all that he has demolished, all that he has gutted and murdered, a myriad of tales that fascinate and frighten. But not thrill. Jim barely recalls it, but only one man could make such stories thrilling. He thinks of a mouth, full and dimpled, short square teeth, weaving out tales like spider silk. A man in red. Jim looks down at Hook and wonders if he really was the man he was searching for. Hook gives no answers but slips off his fine fingers a blood ruby ring and slides it dainty and swift on Jim’s index finger.

"The captain loves you somethin' dreadful," Smee tells him. Hook had slept and demanded nothing less than a parting kiss. Jim, his head on fire with misplaced memories, had confusedly obliged. Smee shakes his head. "Aye. I wouldn't want to be ye for the world."

* * *

 

Outside, there is an elfin creature, neither men nor boy, who seems to shimmer in-between like a candle flame. Docked in leaves and bracken, he stands on air and smiles a gruesome smile.

“The crocodile sent me.” He says, singsong.

“He did?” The blood bangs in Jim’s temples. “Why am I not surprised?”

The boy draws closer, on tiptoe on the sea spray.

“You’re not a pirate.” He says, sounding almost disappointed. “But you’re not a Lost Boy, either.”

“I am lost.”

“Oh!” The boy laughs. Pan. Peter Pan. “The crocodile says he can find you. The crocodile says to meet him at his creek.”

“How do I get there?” Jim looks back at the cabin with the sleeping captain. Smee’s words rattle in his brain. _He loves you something dreadful._ “What would a crocodile want with me?”

Pan is closer. They are almost nose to nose.

“He wants revenge. On Hook.”

“Hook?”

“The man with the one leg,” Pan says it slowly as if trying to remember himself. “He cooked for us. Made us laugh. A pirate, but not one of Hook’s pirates.”

Jim mangles the name from his throat.

“Silver?”

Pan grins.

“That’s the one.” Jim reaches for him – the boy drifts back, cruel. “He grew claws and teeth. He had no way to help himself, not even breath, but Neverland helped.”

“What do you mean?” Jim reaches out further. The boy floats back but takes Jim’s wrist with unusual strength. Jim thinks nothing of it, not in a world where men with hooks for hands are stuck with frozen seas hunting flying children and crocodiles can demand company. He stretches further, further. “Please, I…”

A swift yank. Jim topples. The waves open and close like jaws.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes, there are sharp rocks at his back and the damp swill of water and duckweed wafting around his ankles. Jim slips on the algae rotted rocks. He is in the remains of a castle, and up ahead, he spies the metal gate, open and waiting, and beyond it, the telltale shape of land.

Had he been tricked? Hook had said Pan was remorseless, without pity, a trickster who taught death like a game.

A rock beside the grate begins to move. It’s enormous, and beneath the moonlight, scaled. Terror catches fast in Jim’s throat and he is frozen, unable to move, as the beast descends into the water, enormous body skimming through the waves, rippling tsunamis against Jim’s shaking feet, and he pulls himself out sharpish, clamoring high onto a half-ruined staircase.

The thing crooks its lips, thorn teeth on full show, and crawls onto the piece of beach just beneath Jim, and sits, waiting.

Moments pass. To Jim, they could be hours. Hook’s last kiss scorches his lips, hot despite his terror. He expects it to blister with the sin of it.

“What do you want?” He finally says. He leans over the side, despite the danger. He alone knows how fast and high the crocodile can leap, if it so wished.

The crocodile looms up his head and smiles. Jim sees it run its tongue inside the huge heave of its gullet.

“You want to eat me?” He snarls.

The crocodile shakes his head. And then, a moment later, nods. And then, shakes and nods at the same time.

Jim is dizzy with fear. His mind whirls, returning to kisses and storms and sailboats, barkeeps and commissions and the taste of ginger…

“Long John!” He finally snaps. “Long John Silver, is that you?”

There comes a roaring laugh.

Silver, in a Captain’s coat trimmed with green and gold, smiles his crocodile’s smile and removes his hat in greeting. His skin shimmers scales and his eyes are bright and hungry.

“Good to see you, Master Hawkins.” He booms, oh so jovial.

Jim faints dead away.

 

* * *

 

The sky is moving above him, starlight like fireflies on the waves of the sea. He can feel the crocodile beneath him, muscle and scale streaming through the salt air.

When he wakes again, he is under Silver’s coat. The cave flares with the spittle of campfire and the smell of cooking meat. A hearty gumbo, salted potatoes and pork. Silver’s specialty.

And there be Silver, stirring the pot, in white shirtsleeves like a bygone memory. Jim thought back to the long teeth, the scum summer scales, but the face was as human as could be managed.

“You must be hungry, Jim.” He says lowly. “Young boys like you, always hungry as sharks.”

“Silver.” Jim sits up, weak. “You’re alive.”

“In a strange sort of being, yes,” Silver has his back turned, scooping gumbo into wooden bowls. “I live, as man and animal, I live.”

Jim sits up. His shirt is missing, folded up and sat by the fire to dry. His breeches stick to his skin and makes him shiver. He discreetly reaches for Silver’s coat and inhales into it, scenting galley kitchens, old ginger and brandy, and memories rush with the sense of it.

“I…” He looks toward Silver, only to jump, for the man had been watching him through the whole display, the dark making his irises glitter. “I think I’ve forgotten myself, John.”

“Not entirely,” Silver sits opposite Jim, handing him a bowl. “You being here, following my message. I be mighty impressed, Jim. You did not succumb to the magic of this place.”

“Magic?”

“Aye.” Silver takes a hearty swig of his gumbo. “You forget yeself here. Become shadows, becomes puppets, become whatever he wants ye to be.”

Silver’s voice is suddenly haggard with dislike, but all Jim can do is shake his head of thoughts and takes a spoonful of the gumbo. It is delicious, beyond delicious, the finest thing he has ever tasted, and his stomach gripes with his hunger.

“Unless…” Silver wipes his beard. “Ye know how to manipulate it. Or it be…” He smirks, placing down his empty bowl. “…that it takes a shine to ye.”

“Oh?” It hits Jim, halfway through his meal. The crocodile, the castle, the Pan boy and the sight of Silver….!

Long John was alive.

And here.

“You’re…” Jim almost chokes. Silver raises an eyebrow. “You’re alive? You’re safe….? I thought…I feared….”

“It’s quite alright, Jim,” Silver says, suddenly warm. He extends a claw to Jim’s face, and in the bright spit sparks of the fire, Jim sees his irises are tight like a lizard’s, his skin glittering green. “You came to find me, didn’t you? Knew you couldn’t stay away.”

Even with his face sharp and unusual, predator-like, Jim feels the hot wave of tears beneath his lashes and he turns away from the caress, rubbing his eyes on Silver’s coat.

“I came here, looking for you.” He declares thickly. “And I come too late, for something has happened to you, and I don’t know what to do, how to retreat home, how to…”

“Shush, lad.” The claw is now in his hair, sufficiently gentle, moving back and forth, and the touch is fond and wary, not shivering with uncertain feeling, and Jim sighs and presses himself into Silver’s palm. “You have been through too much, Jim. To think…you came all this way for an old friend.”

“Enemy,” Jim sleepily corrects, only for Silver to guffaw roughly, and Jim follows the sound, their laughter quiet and between them, only them.

 

* * *

 

Jim sleeps, curled inside the body of the monstrous crocodile.

When Jim wakes, the fire has burned down to nought. The lonely drip of water is a strange sound and its ripples reflect on the cave walls.

Jim feels his index finger. Hook’s ring is missing.

Silver is propped against the wall, bare-chested, armour plated scales in place of skin, claws rolling the ring between his palms.

“I can scent him on you.” He holds up the ruby to the light. Each of his words ends in a rumbling growl, pregnant with malcontent. “Each snag, each bead of sweat.”

“Silver,” Jim says cautiously. “Give that back.”

“And why should I be doing that, lad?”

“Because it’s mine.”

Silver rolls his eyes, slaps his lips together, and hums a merry tune, practically twitching with convivial violence.

Jim snags his tongue on his teeth. Silver hums louder.

“Fine, I’ll bite.” He snatches his shirt from the cooling fire, buttons it up to his neck. Silver’s smile curls into a sneer. “What is it to you, Silver?”

“What be it indeed?”

“Don’t play games.” Jim ties his cutlass to his belt. “If you don’t come clean, I’m leaving with or without you.”

“Hah!” Silver slaps his hands together. “The cabin boy has teeth now, does he?”

 “This cabin boy defeated you once.” He kicks away Silver’s coat, retrieving his own jacket next to the pot. The cave still smells of gumbo. Silver’s reptilian eyes swivel in their sockets, bones cracking and coming apart.

Jim crosses the cave and reaches for the ruby ring.

Teeth tear into his arm, cleaving skin and cloth, and Jim releases a high howl of agony. Silver’s sturdy hands grip at his wrist and forearm, sinking deep and deeper. Blood bursts dazzling against Silver’s cheek and lips, green eyes split with oblong pupils, and Jim scrabbles at the creature helplessly, using all his strength to prise him off.

“Long John, no…god, _please…!”_

He is released. Jim scrambles back, crawling back toward the wall, hurling breath and unshed tears, cradling his arm.

“Would you choose a mangy murderer over your own shipmate?” Silver is choked with fury, the kind of fury Jim had witnessed but not experienced, not toward _him_. Jim’s blood weeps from the corners of his mouth. Eyes wide and too bright, smile manic, awful. “Do I have to eat _you_ up as well?”

“I’d claw my way out of your belly!” Jim screams, stumbling strong to his feet. His cutlass is pulled free, his memory now as sharp as the side of it. “For all the madness you have caused me! I came here in search of you, Silver. I threw away my commission on it, to end up in this hellscape!”

“Hell, Jim!” Silver threw up his hands. “What does the lad know of hell, I wonder? By the powers, hell is here! Days that repeat like purgatory in holy scripture, a sea with no horizon, a topsy turvy playground for mad, biting buccaneers. Beasts that become men upon death! Look at me, Jim! Neither living nor dead, be me, cut down by James Hook, and here!” He points at his heart. The scales recede back, revealing blue flesh, dull blooded wounds, open and hanging. Revulsion burns Jim’s throat. “ _Rage_ , Jim. I twist and turn in green waters, becoming greener, hungry for flesh, I was, and so I eat. I eat his hand, Jim, and so delicious it be, sweet meat of vengeance. It is the only thing that kills the brunt of it, the maddening tide of all that this place haunts, the hunt. _Although…”_

He wipes his mouth, licking away the blood on his swollen lips, and Jim swears he hears a clock, ringing dull and weird.

“Oh, _Jim.”_ He hums sweetly. His eyes cloud black, like a shark’s. “My, ye do taste interesting.”

Jim groans; pain a trespass on his body, and he collapses by the smouldering bracken and smells his own blood on it. He absently knocks his head against the gumbo pot. The meat inside is an odd shape and colour. Beside it, there are bones, long and pale and familiar. Oh _god_ no.

“Silver.” He inspects his wound. Blood pumps steadily from the gaping maw in his arm. The bones and blood roll his stomach. “Silver, please. Get a hold of yourself.”

“Hmmm…” The crocodile is coming near. The crutch is laid beside Jim, who turns his head away, defiant. “So what it be, Jim?”

“You said you would never harm me,” Jim whispers. “You said that, and I believed you, and I let you go.”

There are jaws at his neck, testing the skin. Jim wraps his good hand tight around his knife.

“Aye.” His shirt is being opened. His chest, bare boy skin, exposed. He hadn’t been at sea long enough to gauge that berry brown complexion, kissed by the sun, driven by adventure. Now, that was all at an end. His dagger trembles.

“I looked for you.”

“Came too late, Jim.” Claws nick his stomach, drawing down. The sensations are familiar, dreamlike to Jim, for it was in dreams he had them, but here they tingle with ferocity, unnerved and edged ill.

“You think yourself the only victim of this place.” Jim watches the drips from the ceiling. “Self-obsessed. Selfish. Why did I think any different?”

“Pirate,” he chuckles, sounding almost like his old self.

“Monster,” Jim says, his cutlass held by his groin and pushing up into Silver’s neck, a warning.  “A monster that I did _not_ betray.”

Silver has stopped. He hovers, listening, his index finger running down the slit on Jim’s stomach, lovingly etched by Hook.

“I keep seeing faces.” Jim moans, pain making him light. “So many faces.”

Silver leans up slightly, hiding a snarl behind a smile, and Jim shoves him off, crawling over to his effects, searching for something for which to bind the wound.

Silver watches, tasting Jim’s blood on his tongue.

“I may have forgotten meself for a moment, Jim-Lad.”

It’s almost funny. Almost.

“You think?”

“Sarcasm doesn’t rest well on an _educated_ man.”

“Don’t talk like back then!” Jim tears a strip from his coat, binding his arm clumsily with one hand. “I’m no longer your eager-eyed cabin boy, rapt to your lies. You can drop the act.”

“He marked you, didn’t he?” Silver is advancing. Jim inches away. Man as Silver might now be, he doesn’t know when the crocodile will reappear. “Alas, Jim. I be selfish. I am a creature of possessions, a flawed man, hungry merely for your affections.”

“My _affections?”_ Jim’s voice carries, sending all manner of small creature scurrying for cover. Silver looks about as guilty as he can manage. Not much, then. “So it was merely _affection_ that made you rip open my arm, because you wished to outdo a mark on my stomach? What child have you become, Silver?”

“I be nought but a victim of passion,” Silver leans into Jim, warming his shoulder with his breath. A shredding of cotton leaves Jim’s shoulders bare, and Jim can barely recant before lips, warm and full, are laid on his neck.

“Passion is violence,” Jim warns, but his heart is rising, an itch in his legs and stomach. The agony is still raw. It tames the pleasure, brings out the scathe of his tongue. “I am not something you can own, I am not a _possession_.”

“Wouldn’t dream of thinking so, Jim-Lad,” Silver says offhand, in a way Jim is sure Silver says to all that he has bedded, and Jim feels suddenly so alone at that thought he tries to pull away.

“And what makes you think I return your hungry affections?”

There is a pause. Silver’s touch moves down, dangerously close to his bite, and Jim feels himself being loosely adjusted.

He brings Jim’s ruined arm to his mouth, and Jim starts, kicking away, before Silver’s arm knocks him down and holds him there. There is a rush of numbness, then euphoria, tension draining from Jim’s exhausted body, working out of him slow, and Silver tears a strip of fabric from his belt and binds the bite, which has now shrunk, skin coiled back onto the bone, no pain, merely a scar.

He smirks, triumphant, at Jim’s dazed appearance.

“Because ye never gave me reason to believe otherwise.”

Jim knows not what powers Silver has, how he can maim and unmaim in the same bite, why he is scaled and frightening and full of rage. Silver wears Hook’s ring on his talons. He holds it up, just shy of Jim’s blurring vision.

“Do you still want it?”

“No.” Jim whispers. “He – He did this to you.”

“Aye, Jim.” Silver sounds drowsy. Jim thinks of saltwater crocodiles, spread out beneath hot skies. “But the rest, I did to meself, or so the boy says.”

Jim rolls on his side, Silver settled behind him, his arms wrapped around his waist, his breathing languid. He is so warm to be near, his weight blistering up Jim’s back.

“Who is that boy?” Jim rests his aching hand on his forearm. “You sent him to me. Does he speak crocodile, or do you show your human face to him as well?”

“Heh.” Silver ghosts his teeth on Jim’s neck. “You almost sound jealous, Jim-Lad. But no. You be the only one.”

“The only one,” Jim declares as if it is a pact, and maybe that sounded possessive, for it pleases Silver greatly, who rests his mouth on Jim’s neck, vibrating against his skin. Tasting, tasting, always tasting.

Jim hadn’t thought about kissing, or how bizarre it was, for the last time he had seen Silver he had been on a boat, and Jim a boy. Yet, here they lay together, almost like lovers, and Jim, unaccustomed to seduction, or its many plays, realizes that Silver’s teeth and lips are at his neck, drawing blood in a pseudo kiss, and it is as if he has just cracked the idea of what affections Silver spoke so rarely of, and suddenly Hook returns so adeptly and crudely to his recollection he recoils as Silver turns his face to kiss.

“No.” He says. “Don’t.”

They lay now, face to face, Silver’s hair free from its bandana, lying curled across the damp indents of his collarbone. Jim breathes in at the sight. It’s different. It’s different from the time on the Hispaniola, different from Hook’s perfumed, murky quarters. Silver has tucked his teeth away, unsmiling.

“I endured it.” Jim says. It’s not an apology, nor it is an explanation. It is just what it was.  “I endured him. He was you and he wasn’t. Red and black coats, John! Everything was red and black. I pitied him and hated him and couldn’t remember why. Now I know why everyone forgets. Because if you remember, you go mad. You turn into something else. If you cannot be a citizen, you become a demon, or monster, or mermaid, or whatever this place designs, and its hell.”

“It be a sweet dream for some,” mumbles Silver darkly. “Me, watching you, be his dream.”

He lifts his ring to his big, red mouth, and swallows it. His Adam’s apple bobs obscenely, and Jim wonders about the abyss of his belly, where hands sit mummified in the dark.

Jim hears the shore, lapping still, and the howl of what may be a winter storm.

“He’ll be looking for me,” He wonders openly. “Smee said…said he loved me something dreadful.”

“He be dreadful, that true,” Silver plants his hands above Jim’s head, his heavy black hair hanging down to Jim’s cheek, and it is loose and wild, brushed with salt, not coiffed and corkscrewed and scented with oils. He smiles, the dents of his mouth wide and wider, curling up to the tips of his earlobes, steak knife teeth bobbled on black gum. **“But he be as terrible as me, Jim?”**

“No,” Jim says, and pulls at him, fisting in the curls and tugging _hard._ Silver’s mouth meets his and Jim twists Silver’s hair into his mighty back, clawing his own human nails into the scales, which give way beneath his touch, falling like leaves in the autumn, and Jim feels the skin there, calloused and tough from whip crack and seafaring, and he kisses him harder, lips moving against Silver’s heat, and he tastes of memory, pinching like thistle barbs on his tongue.

Silver is at his neck, biting hard but human, and Jim cups the back of his head, exposing his neck before Jim rolls him on his back, straddling his hips, and they both feel the shape of each other between them. Jim is shy and swearing, but he rips off his shirt and fondles his buttons on his breeches. Silver is leant up on his elbows, hooded-eyed and smiling, but although his flesh is free of scales his eyes burn crocodile green, and he places his broad palm flat against Jim’s crotch, and the friction is such Jim bucks and crumbles, and he pulls at Silver again, showing his age, his inexperience.

“Please.” He says. “Please.”

He feels mad then, taken asunder by Never Land, and it is a madness that Silver gleefully seizes, turning Jim on his belly, turning the world upside down and everything with it. The heat is unimaginable, and Silver over him, shedding clothes like old skins, his fingers harsh and wet between Jim’s legs, and he is with tail, without tail, with teeth and without teeth, clawed and declawed, scaled and non-scaled. 

Jim cries out, buried beneath the mass of the crocodile.

 

* * *

 

The light is a dim flutter on the sea. Early morning, spring on land and winter on the water. Jim sits on the rocks beside the creek, shivering inside his coat. On the beach, the crocodile swaggers, a mountain beast. Its missing limb does not stall its speed. It looks upon Jim, and smiles. Jim frowns, gathers his legs to his chest, just shy of the approaching reptile.

“I was a boy back then,” he says, bitter. “Just a boy. And you betrayed me. You would have killed my friends.”

The crocodile fixes him with a stony moss eye.

_You be no longer a boy._

“Now you have had what you wanted,” he continues, “What next? What now?”

_You think I am done with you._

“Yes.”

_Hah! As if I would be so blind as to turn over me treasure._

“There are many treasures in the world,” Jim’s body is sore, intimately so, pain triggering fever dreams from the previous night, pain tinted with high and hysterical pleasures. “And what could you want of a navy man, I wonder?”

_You be no counterfeit coin, printed over in excess. You are unique to me, and mine._

Jim glares at the thing. It smiles back, wider.

“You are going to kill Hook.”

It nods, silent again.

“Damn you,” Jim looks out toward the sea. The Jolly Roger is a miniature on the horizon. “Damn you. You know I cannot help you kill him.”

_He killed me. Fair is fair, Jim-Lad. Now not be the time to show mercy, honest brave and true you be, but frankly, you be stupid._

“You sound more like yourself when you have scales.”

_He does not care about you, lad._

“And you?” Jim gets up, and fearless, kneels beside the crocodile’s huge head. “You do, do you?”

_Yes._

Jim touches the flat, broad head, feeling along the horned hide. The crocodile closes its eyes.

_You know it, Jim._

The Jolly Roger comes quickly, winter warming to spring as it approaches. The crocodile slithers back into the mud, baking large and watchful in the gathering heat.

 

* * *

 

“Did he fuck you?” Hook has Smee wash Jim down in front of him in his cabin. Jim’s back and chest are mapped with scratches, proud and prickly on his flesh. Smee coughs, reaching for his undergarments. Jim slaps his hand and shakes his head.

“No, Captain,” Jim confirms, sliding his hands down his bare arms, feeling the rise of his new and impressive scar. Silver had not fucked him, crude as the phrasing was. Jim guessed the reason why. If he had, he would have eaten him. “He did not do that.”

“Did I not say I would lead you to your quarry?” Hook noses the back of his hair, brushing aside Jim’s growing scruff. “Although, you were not entirely honest with me.”

“He was not a lover.” Jim’s tongue feels wound up in his own head. “He was a friend. A mutineer, if you want my full honesty, but I took his friendship regardless.”

“A noble gesture!” exclaims Hook, sarcastic. “Had I known he was so dear, well, I would have spared him.”

Smee coughs louder, and when Hook’s back is turned, takes a swig of port straight out of the decanter.

“You were not honest with me.” He stares out the porthole. The crocodile’s tail flashes out of sight. “You took his life. And in doing so, he became something else.”

“He became a beast. Bad form, if I ever saw it.”

Jim looks slowly toward him.

“Long John Silver is too strong to die so easy.”

Hook laughs, frightened.

 

* * *

 

Too strong to die, not human enough to live. Days later, at midnight, Jim leans over the boat, looking for the green streak shifting in the dark ocean, and the creature lifts its enormous head out of the water, resting it against the bow.

“You’ve been circling for days.” Jim rests his head on his arms. He did so, many moons ago, as a boy huddled beneath the stars, a new friend at his side and all the adventures of the world opening at his feet. How long ago it was, how further now it seems. He is not in the world where those dreams woke and shrivelled. He reaches out his hand toward the crocodile. “He hasn’t touched me. He grows impatient, Silver.”

The crocodile makes a low, rumbling sound, rippling notes like laughter. Jim can no longer hear the secret language between them. Back on the boat, near Hook, it is as if a severance has occurred. The crocodile blinks his human eyes at Jim, and with his front claw, splashes the water.

Jim retreats his hand, frowning.

The crocodile splashes again, nudging its head to the side. For a massive creature it is a massive movement, and finally, Jim understands.

“I can’t come with you.” Jim’s knees quake. He thinks of the cave, the rolling scale eyes, the blood-soaked on his sleeves, the press and sin of Silver’s skin. He shakes his head. “No. He’ll become suspicious.”

The crocodile sniggers, sinking slowly back into the water, its ball eyes fading beneath the tide. Jim hurries back to his cabin, to find Smee standing pale by the door.

“Captain’s quarters, lad.” He shakes his white head. “He’s had a night terror, he has.”

 

* * *

 

Clocks. Hook screams of clocks, rolling his bedclothes. Before Jim, he slept with his head slammed on the Captain’s table, but now he demands Jim beside him in the bed, where he can howl and holler and tear Jim’s skin to pieces as he wakes from his nightmares. Jim has the rather disgusting notion he has taken back to his human bed to cover normalcy for them, to create a space pertaining to the domestic. He lies no hands on Jim, even if the air boils in the small luxuriant cabin.

“Oh love.” He drawls, drunkenly kissing Jim’s face. “Oh love. I could give you all this world has to offer. Go anywhere, touch anything. We’ll be gods, kings.”

Jim does not answer. He is not a liar like Silver. He doesn’t weave stories to uphold delusions. He just says nothing, even if he knows Hook would never abandon the addictive magic of Neverland’s turning tides. He does not know how to escape Neverland, if he can at all, as if it is possible to let the water swallow him up and transport him back to the storm with his ship, the ship sent to find Silver.

A childish guile, it was. To let boyish sentiment drive him into purgatory. He would do it again, he knows, for his heart may be bruised but still beats with all his naïve, unprotected love.

The lights sway in and out as the ship rocks. The nights are cold when Jim is not with the Captain. He sees no reason why he should be, except his own cabin is small and dinghy and rushed with water. Once before he had tried to cling to the fumbled shapes of his memory, but now whenever he needed to remember, he would trace the scar on his arm and feel the slow, agonizing drip of logic return to his head.

The crocodile had given back his mind, dimmed the sweet madness that Hook had cast. Now everything is alive and aware and hurting. Jim waits until Hook is asleep before he ventures out to the deck, content to be alone.

A desperate splashing catches his attention.

Silver, in skin form, clawing up unto the rudder, his back open like orange peel. The starlight is open and bright and beautiful, making even the blood bejeweled. A rope swings low, battering Silver’s claws.

Jim immediately pushes over the side, desperate.

“Take it!” He cries, as low as he can. “Take it, you idiot!”

Silver peers up, his hair wild and stuck to his neck and face, and Jim sees with a violent beat of his heart that he is, at least for now, fully human.

Two legs he has not got, but the power of the hands gripping the rope have no equal. Jim pulls, grounding himself on the deck, begging between his teeth that no swab hears them. There is the friction of Silver’s single boot sliding on the port side before finally, he tosses himself over, right into Jim’s waiting arms.

It should be romantic. Maybe it is. In the dark, Jim finds Silver’s face, their foreheads coming together, and Jim apologizes, again and again, trying not to weep, for Silver’s breath is ragged and awful. He looks at him dully, as is not quite seeing him, and Jim wonders whether the power and protection of the crocodile has left him.

Carefully, Jim aids him to his cabin, Silver’s teeth chittering with the pain, and in the cool and dank room Jim is grateful for its privacy, if not for its facilities.

Wordlessly, Jim lays Silver down, who obeys, letting his back be stripped and treated with damp cloth and salt. On his front, Long John lay, as Jim moves around the cabin, the silence between them growing as the lamp lights flutter ghosts on the walls.

There is an awareness now, a keen look in Silver’s eye, turned towards Jim, who washes the blood off his hands in the sink.

“Jim?” He says roughly, and the breaking of the silences, the reminder of their shared language, causes all the hair to rise on Jim’s neck, and his heart to beat, pathetically, again.

Relief is its own personal madness, and Jim forgets to be a gentleman, for all the memories of Smollett and Arrow seem as faded as map markers. He is already in Silver’s arms, in Silver’s lap, a siren call to his lips, and he is kissed as he kisses, working his mouth in frustration of red coated pirates and the memory of adolescent fantasy, before he forcibly breaks.

He breathes as if he has just been drowning, and Silver, delighted Silver, has his thumbs pushed hard into Jim’s rib cage and his eyes oblong with reptilian hunger. The wraps full away to reveal clean healed skin.

The madness eases and Jim curses, clawing back his reason.

“You tricked me,” he hisses. Silver slowly starts to smile. It should invoke nightmares but all it does is invoke fury. Jim is not afraid. He has never been afraid. Not of Silver, not of Hook, not of anyone. The only person he could fear was Smee, with his soft sarcastic eyes, but all Jim feels is sorrow and hurt and love, the latter which out screams the former two and brings the most agony. “You tricked me, you son of…!”

As a crocodile, Silver had been so reasonable in his words. As a man, he is beastly, and impatient, and frayed with flaws, and the kiss he delivers on Jim’s neck shuts all curses into a moan. Jim is pushed down on his cot, his shirt opened, his legs spread. Silver discards buttons, shreds linen, eager to taste Jim’s flesh. His strength is enormous, his hands ungentle, swamp waters and galley kitchens a hot musk in the cabin. Jim is not eager to fight. He has resisted Hook. Silver, he had resisted all for that final vulgar act, even if their bodies move against each other as if rehearsed in previous lives.

They toss in each other’s arms, Jim releasing all restraint in a final sigh, and collapses beneath Silver, silent. Silver stops, lies on Jim’s chest, the soft scratch of his bread a shiver on his skin.

“Must have ye, lad.” He speaks less. Jim wonders if he will eventually disappear inside the crocodile, became dumb and dangerous, less dangerous then he already is, maybe. A thinking beast is worse than a hungry reptile. How deep does Neverland’s magic go, in sealing Long John’s soul into the scales? “Must have ye now or die.”

“You’ll live, regardless of what I give.” He squeezes his eyes shut, clutches at Silver’s broad, scarred shoulders. He can feel him changing, can hear the pull and crunch as the body stretches, the soft mouth now full of teeth. “Christ, Silver, stay a little while!”

“Hm.” Silver’s voice is loud, clear. Bemused. “I’m here, lad.”

Jim opens his eyes.

Silver looks down at him, his smile fading, as Jim’s hurt is now in his eyes.

“My Jim,” He says, in his comforting sea cook voice. He leans down, resting his mouth on Jim’s forehead, kissing along the temple, down to his cheek and neck. “You be my power, lad.”

“Power?” Jim follows his lips, betraying his self-control. “What do you mean?”

“Aye, lad.” Silver sounds as he once did, so warm and inviting, and Jim sinks into him, useless. “It be the tender heart of yours that permit me power, lad.”

Jim tries to think. Beneath Silver, he feels right, put back together. But his memory works. The scar pangs. He remembers the fallen crutch, the careful word of need, the yank of a young boy overboard.

Power permitting, Jim has given access to the ship, to Hook.

“You li-!”

Silver’s kiss smothers the sound, the guilt. It is earnest and hungry and with a promise of fulfilled agendas, and Jim finally succumbs, sanity lost to sensation.

* * *

 

The ship rocks. The air is summer. The Captain does not know.

Jim is stretched out on his cot. He is bare in the candlelight, the sheet wrapped around his thigh. On the floor dozes the enormous crocodile, coiled tight, head up and teeth on smug display.

Jim hurts. It is a different pain to the bite. It sits deeper in his bones. It tells stories. As does the stickiness of his skin, his lax and long muscles, the bemused stir of the crocodile as he rises. Jim turns to the washing bowl, wringing out the old cloth between his fingers, and cleans between his thighs and back.

“Could you come back with me?” He asks quietly. “Return to our world?”

The crocodile opens his eyes.

_I do not think so._

“Why not?” Jim throws the cloth in the bucket. “Why…could you not break this curse?”

_Aye, Jim. ‘Tis be the curse that keeps me alive._

Jim rubs his eyes, hiding his sigh. He takes in a deep breath.

“This is no way I can bring you back, is there?”

_No, lad._

Jim sees his reflection in the cracked mirror. The crocodile, a swarm of dark behind him. If he didn’t know any better, Jim would say he was alone there, in the dank and dripping cabin.

_I’m sorry, Jim._

“I’m sorry too.” Jim retrieves his trousers. He is numb to words, to feeling. “I didn’t get to you in time.”

_The fact you came at all, lad. A miracle._

Jim buttons the remains of his cuffs. His cheeks are wet with tears.

_Oh, lad. My Jim. Your eyes be as they were, all that time ago, on the deck, and me, ol’ Long John, driftin’ away._

“I shouldn’t have let you go,” Jim says stiffly. “I should have…maybe…”

In the crocodile’s mental inflexions, there is a surprise.

_You would have come, would you?_

“To prevent this, I would do anything.”

_Aye. But you have given me sanity, Jim-Lad. Clarity again. As reliable as a clock, you are._

“Clock?” Jim turns around slowly. “Why would you say that?”

He jumps. The beast’s head is just shy of his lower stomach, the snout a wet caress on his clothes. Jim gasps, stumbling back against the bowl and water.

_Havin’ you near, lad. So sweet it be. Me thinks clearly. Havin’ ye so fair and true. Why, if only I could be so fine all the time…_

The mouth slowly opens, the pink-veined gullet on display. Inside there is darkness, no throat or stomach, just an endless black.

Jim’s knuckles crack with the press of his body against the table.

“Steady on the guns, Smee,” Hook’s rich plum voice, rising slurred and strange on the wind. The crocodile freezes, slowly closing its mouth. All reason dulls in its eye. “Why, where be my Hawkins? I require beauty, Smee. Youth and beauty…”

“Don’t," Jim says. “Don’t. He’s a monster, John. But…”

He is silenced as the creature turns, swatting Jim back on the bed with the wave of the tail. Beneath the starlit sky, the creature ventures on the deck. There is a rising scream. It is Hook’s.

Silence.

Then the ship comes terrifyingly alive.

 

* * *

 

There’s the boy-man cackling away, the zoom and zip of his laughter a testament to his speed of flight. He’s above and away, observing as opposed to engaging. From his cabin ,Jim can hear it. Can hear it all.

What is he, some coward, to loiter here as the world comes apart? Who is he, to come so far for one single goal, to let it die, even with all the twisted memory now attached to it?

Jim unsheathes his sword. Even with the blur of his mind, he remembers how to defend, how to fight.

He stumbles out. His skin is dirty with sweat, his body soiled. The crocodile crawls amongst the men, signally, toward Hook. His mighty back is ridden with bullets, shattered knife and cannon. Nothing stops its assault, the dilatory plod of the claws toward the trembling Hook. It is smiling.

“How did it get here?” He screeches. The boy man laughs and hoots above. _“How did the beast scale the bow?”_

“He didn’t.” Jim holds up his blade. Peter goes silent, as does the crew. The crocodile halts, lips curling up. “He wasn’t a crocodile when he did.”

“He be a crocodile now, Mr Hawkins!” Fury is common on Hook’s face, a twisting of muscle and nerve imprinted on Neverland’s history. But heartbreak is another. He lifts his rapier aloft. His tone is soft, aching. “Ye would choose a beast over me, James Hook?”

“No competition between beasts.” Jim is no longer a boy. His back is straight, his footwork gliding into place, for Hook is advancing. He is no longer a boy for he is no longer listening to the pity, the gouge in his chest at the tears on Hook’s cheeks. “You have committed murder, James Hook, and under the authority of the crown you will be punished for it.”

 _“There is no authority here but mine!”_ Hook screams, all lightness forgotten, and advances.

Their swords clash, an agony of metal. The moon glides light across their blades as they dance. Jim is skilled, but young. Hook is a testament to his reputation, for his jabs are vicious and unrelenting and Jim blocks, catching sparks of that awful, beautiful face. It is Hook’s passion, unfettered. Love and death, moving mere centimetres apart.

Hook swings back, throwing his rapier up, his hook meeting the clang of Jim’s blade. The hook drags in slowly, Jim’s weight braced against it, and he lifts his gaze and meets Hook’s eyes, and in the madness, there is a tenderness, for he has seen the pause in Jim’s hand, the lessening of his grip. The betrayal of a feeling, and Jim’s heart begins to ring in alarm.

The crocodile laughs. The boy man has flown away.

Hook’s pupils burst like red flowers.

“You ugly brute!” He spits. “You have taken all from me, all that has worth!”

The crocodile stops smiling.

Jim’s hands are high, where he had blocked the attack of the hook, but his breastbone is exposed, naked to the elements. Hook’s rapier has sunk into his skin, deep. There is a dazzling pressure, a clean break as the metal slides clear, slicked with blood.

The world blurs. The pirate in gold and red flutters like a dream. On his face is hate and love. Jim cannot tell the difference, only that the dream is reaching for him, a weak expression on the face, now truly old.

The crocodile springs from the deck, jaws closing about the man. Hook and sword scrape at the creature’s scales, fighting, but there is a _crunch_. The arms go limp, the one flesh hand pulsing. Another _crunch._

The sky turns to black. It begins to snow, cool on Jim’s face, which is colder still. Tears hurt his eyes. He tries to shift, to kick himself up, but his lungs are weakening. His mouth is filling with blood. The pirates have hidden themselves, tucked back in the cabins. Their gibbering is swallowed by the rising wind.

“Jim.” A human hand holds his face.  Hook or Silver, Jim does not know. He returns the incoming kiss, even if blood gurgles between his teeth. “Jim, stay with me.”

“Can’t,” Jim whispers. The sky is opening. There is a light, blood salt on his lips and tongue. There is a –

 

* * *

 

**_“Captain Hawkins!”_ **

Jim splutters, spits salt water.

The heat is overwhelming. A Spanish sun, warming his sopping skin.

Above him, in a swarm of colour and light, is his first mate. About him, his older crew, peering confused and relieved at his stirring.

“Thought you were a goner, Mr Hawkins,” Prue, his hired mate, gets on his stocky knee and brushes the hair from Jim’s brow. “Might I say, it be touch and go for a while there, Captain.”

“If it weren’t for the stranger, ye would be done for,” pips another.

“Stranger?” Jim takes Prue’s strong grip and is pulled to his feet.

“The man who fished ye out in the storm,” adds Prue. “His one boat be overturned in the lashin’ waves, and he managed to keep ye above the water at much cost to ‘imself.”

“It was no mean feat, I assure you.” A man is sat on a nearby barrel, a blanket around his shoulders and a cup of hot grog in his single hand. Even with his hair damp, his fine clothes ragged, the education is sweet on his vocals, his face mature but befit of gentlemanly beauty. He smiles at Jim, a fine brow arched in humour. “May it be praised that I managed so.”

Jim breaks away from Prue. His head spins as he gazes at the man, who looks at him long, a linger in his lashes that makes the other sailors chuckle, knowing.

“Thank you, sir,” Jim says. He sits down heavily. All authority has fled his tone, and Prue grabs him, and escorts him to the cabin, away from the smirking stranger in red.

“You rest, C’ptain,” Prue says. Jim lies on his cot, silent. “Why, it was a biblical storm. I reckon it shook up all the creatures, got ‘em all movin’.”

“How so?” Jim feels his chest. His compass is gone, breastbone unmarred.

“Lucky we picked you up when we did,” Prue rambles. “Why, it be mighty odd. Followin’ along, behind you and that stranger – he be named Jamie too, why, a message from God me reckons – there be the biggest croc I ever did see, streakin’ scary behind. Missin’ a foot to boot – aged old thing, lookin’ for a meal.”

Jim does not reply.

“Why,” Prue continues. “I ‘appened to look overboard when you woke up, C’ptain, and it still be there, followin’ us. Hope it knows we are no longer givin’ our crewmates away so easy!”

Jim is silent. He rises, crosses to his desk, touches the map and the hastily scrawled coordinates across the papyrus.

“We turn back, now.” He says, dully. “There is nothing left here.”

“Aye, C’ptain,” is Prue’s stumbled response. There is the click of the latch as he leaves.

Alone, Jim soothes out the map with his palm. The surrounding areas are blank, unfilled.

Through the porthole, he hears a ticking.

“Long John Silver is too strong to die so easy,” He whispers.

Above, there is the laughter of James Hook, and outside, the whisper of his crocodile.

_Hello, Jim._

 

* * *

 

**_"I came looking for you, and I didn’t know how I would find you, or what I would find in you. But I have found you, monster or not, and by that, I will keep finding you, finding you until all this has come and blown away until each scale has dropped from your skin, I will be here.”_ **

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am actually considering a part 2 for this particular instalment...thoughts?


End file.
